


Bittersweet and Strange

by Whyndancer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Beauty and the Beast AU, Darcy has miscalculated, F/M, Frigga Lives, Loki reacts badly, Odin's A+ Parenting, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Tale as Old as Time, background Jane Foster/ Thor, burn as slow as fuck, cause Darcy curses like a sailor, rating bumped for language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2018-12-12 21:03:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11745144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whyndancer/pseuds/Whyndancer
Summary: In a final desperate bid to force Thor to share in his pain, Loki, cursed and imprisoned, uses borrowed power to trap his brother's lover with him for eternity unless someone is willing to take her place.  He did not expect Darcy.





	1. Track 1 - Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yatzuaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzuaka/gifts).



> Holy crap what am I doing starting a multichaper big fic that has nothing to do with any of my other WIP's?  
> Honestly this idea bit me back in April, and I've been pecking away at it ever since. The muses have been good to me the last few days and I've got a first chapter ready to go and the barest start of a second one. Here's hoping they continue to cooperate. No promises though. First real chapter will be posted shortly.
> 
> Edit: I forgot to include this. I had [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3JmvKM2k2o) on repeat while writing the prologue  
> 

 

Once upon a time, in a faraway realm,

A young Prince lived in a shining castle.

As the second son of the King and Queen

He never wanted for any of the finest things

that the kingdom could provide.

And yet the prince could find no contentment with his life.

The kingdom and it’s people valued

Physical strength and Honor in battle,

And though his elder brother was brash and hot tempered

He was a powerful warrior who grew to embody

All the things that the people of the realm strove to be,

The  shining golden heir to the throne.

The younger prince, by contrast, was slight of build

And unfavorably complected, a pale moon to his brothers sun.

He favored books and magic over weapons and armor

And took no joy in battle, lest it was a battle of wits.

Time and again as the prince grew from a boy into a man,

He found himself ostracized for his differences

His thoughts and opinions disregarded and

Too many times was his kindness taken for weakness,

And his heart grew bitter and cold.

Then one day the prince learned a terrible secret

One that seemed to prove his whole life a lie

Pain and despair overtook his reason

And drove him to terrible  deeds

He fell into a cycle of rage and retribution

That lasted for several years.

Until finally the King captured him for good,

Binding his magic and cursing him,

_“If you are so intent on proving yourself monstrous,_

_Than all shall know you as a monster on sight!”_

The king did all this, unaware

That the prince was already under curse.

He was imprisoned in an ancient fortress,

At the base of a mountain at the edge of the kingdom

To live out his days powerless and alone.

But even in his rage and shame

The prince was cunning and vindictive

In the forgotten depths of his prison

He found an ancient ritual that would allow him

To bind another to him there without his natural magic.

And so he set his trap

And waited, for someone unwary enough

To approach … the Beast


	2. Track 2 - Into the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy is (mostly) enjoying her all expenses paid vacation. Sure she's really only there as moral support for Jane and spends an awful lot of time as a third wheel, but hey, it's still the most exclusive vacation spot ever.  
> Oh, ffs Thor, skinny jeans do not make appropriate riding pants ever and if you'd just mentioned horses to begin with...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here goes nothing

Jane was officially terrible at horses. Not that Darcy was any kind of expert herself, but she’d at least learned the basics at summer camp years ago.  

And they'd been doing a metric shitton of horseback riding over the last few days. Darcy wasn't quite sure what she’d expected from this impromptu intergalactic vacation, one that had started with Thor coming back from his latest bout of Avengering dripping with homesickness and had somehow turned into  _ “you should all come with me to visit Asgard!!!” _ , but she was about 98.9% certain that Jane, at least, had  _ not _ expected horses.

After just a couple of days staying at the Palace Of Ultimate Ostentatiousness with Thor beaming at everyone and at least one feast ( it might have been two? She’s not quite sure that the second one wasn’t just the first one not having ended?), even Thor seemed to be tired of Papa Odin, aka the King of Bling, being the biggest glowering grump ever.

Long story short, neither she or Jane had made even a token protest or asked any kind of questions when Thor had suggested they go visit his mother at the country estate she was staying at while recuperating from her near death experience at the hands of the Dark Elves.

The excursion had started off in an appropriately Space Viking like style, with everybody piling into a pair of snazzy af flying golden Viking boats shortly after sunrise. “Everyone”  in this case, included Darcy, Jane, Thor,  and two out of four of Thor’s warrior bros/groupies.  The giant ginger vacuum cleaner they called Volstagg was staying in the city with his wife and eight(!?) kids, as was the insanely Badass Warrior Chick, Sif - minus the wife and kids part. Which was kind of a shame on multiple levels. It was a shame that she wasn't coming with because Darcy would love another girl to hang out with. It was a shame she didn't have a wife and kids because then maybe she'd stop looking at Thor with lovesick puppy eyes and at Jane like she was the worst homewrecker since Anne Boleyn.  Darcy still wasn't quite sure if Thor and Sif had ever actually been an item, but it was pretty clear that if not, it wasn't for a lack of desire on Sif’s part.  At least Jane wouldn't have to deal with the near constant death glares.

With Thor and Jane sharing one boat that left Darcy packed in with Fandral the Robin Hood wannabe, which would be nice for eye candy reasons if it weren’t for the regrettable facial hair and also him being a non-stop smarmodon, and Hogun the Grim, who she really couldn’t find a better nickname for at all. Dude did not smile. Or talk. At least he made a good buffer between her and Fandral the Fuckboy. 

Hogun was also one of the only non-nordic looking people she'd since since she'd arrived in Space!Viking paradise and the more she thought about that, the weirder it was. Like, word was that Mr. The Grim ( hmmm… maybe she could call him Padfoot? He was kinda creepy quiet...and very Sirius… It had potential) was Vanir rather than Aesir and that was why he wasn’t (as) tall, blonde and White People™ tanned, looking vaguely East Asian-ish and almost totally out of place.  Which didn’t explain why Thor’s mom, who was also supposedly a Princess of Vanaheim, looked every bit as golden and Nordic as every Aesir she’d met so far. Of course, she hadn’t actually seen the queen in person, but if her portraits were anything to go by… In any case the situation was pinging her ‘gross racism and imperialism and colonialism’ radar pretty hard. It was possible that she just didn’t have enough information yet, but based on how many times she’d been addressed as ‘Mortal’ and ‘Girl’ since she got there, she figured that at least the racism part was pretty much a lock.  

Long story short, Jane got to spend eight hours cuddling her beefy blond boy toy while Darcy wedged herself as far from Viking!Casanova as possible. Thank all the deific whatnots for the  kickass solar charger that had come with her shiny, new top-of-the-line Starkphone.  Tony Fucking Stark himself had showed up at Jane’s lab about a month after The Dark Elf incident, “to meet Point Break’s people”.  He’d spent like, three hours talking Science! with Jane, during which Darcy was pretty sure that he'd offered to either hire Jane or fund her research because she'd heard the phrase ‘private rooms in Avengers Tower’.  Though that may have been directed at Thor. The whole encounter was kind of a blur, but two days later a huge package had arrived with new phones and laptops set up for each of them.  Darcy had always been kind of partial to apple products, but she also lived by the phrase “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”.  And damned if it hadn’t come in handy on this little inter-realm edition of ‘meet the folks’. She’d loaded it up with music and books and games that didn’t take data before they’d left earth just in case Asgard wasn’t quite as entertaining as Thor made it out to be. Case in point, the fancy hover boats had been distinctly lacking any sort of in-flight entertainment. 

After the boats had taken them way out of the city, traveling up a river deep into an increasingly huge forest toward some fairly intimidating mountains, they had docked at a big, impressive lodge type building.  Darcy had figured that they’d reached their destination until Thor explained that they were just stopping here for lunch and that there were several hours left to travel. 

After a meal that was only slightly epic in proportion (she’s pretty sure that if the ginger mountain had come with they would have needed a whole ‘nother boat just for provisions) everyone had headed back outside. She and Jane had just pointed themselves in the direction of the boats when a couple dudes had come from around the back leading half a dozen really gorgeous horses. Five were saddled for riding and the sixth, largest, sturdiest horse was hitched to a hovering cart-boat thingy that was surprisingly  _ not _ golden and  _ was  _ piled high with what was pretty clearly all the stuff that they’d brought in on the boats.

By the time she’d connected the dots, The Grim and Fandango were halfway to the horses and Jane had turned a whiter shade of pale.  Darcy decided that now might be a good time to start asking questions.

“Thor. Dude. What’s with the horses? I mean, those are some absolutely gorgeous animals, but, A.) I’m pretty sure Jane didn’t pack any riding clothes and I know I didn’t, because B.) why do we need horses when we’ve got flying space boats? Why are we not taking the flying boats the whole way?”

Thor hadn’t even had the good sense to look abashed. “Ah, but Lady Darcy, both you and Jane have your Denim trousers on.  I have worn such trousers while on Midgard and though they are not proper riding leathers, they should prove sturdy enough for the task.” He accompanied that statement with one of those grins that he made when he was particularly pleased with himself. They tended to make Jane go a little weak at the knees, but put Darcy in mind of a Golden Retriever who’d just figured out how to get into the food bins. Love did strange things to people.

She’d decided it wasn’t worth trying to lecture him on exactly why neither Jane’s wal-mart brand jeans that were probably ten years old and had nearly worn through in the knees and other areas nor her own stretch skinny jeans even began to qualify as horseback riding quality. It was easier just to say, “Thor, I hate to break it to you, but not all jeans are worthy.”

Thor’s Proud Doggo smile turned into his Confused Doggo smile, but it seemed they weren’t getting out of it that easily. “Be that as it may, my friend, my mother’s retreat is too deep into the forest to be reached by longboat. The trees are too dense for the sails and there will be no proper place to dock them. It is simply more practical to travel on horseback.”

Despite her best efforts (she knew he meant well, she really did), her reply had come out so dry and acerbic that not even His Obliviousness could miss it.  “The problem,” she drawled, “with that statement is and this is just a guess, that the whole practicality factor kinda goes up in smoke when not all of the party members can ride.”   It had been gratifying to see Thor’s face finally fall. He even paled a bit. “I’m guessing you kinda didn’t think about the part where most of Midgard has grown up without their bottoms ever touching horseflesh.”

She’d let him work himself about halfway to tizzy state (really, they guy was just  _ too  _ easy to wind up) before taking pity on him.  Also, Jane had had almost enough time at this point to decide between despair and outrage and it was better for all parties concerned to head either one of those options off at the pass.  “Lucky for you, I happen to be one of the lucky few Midgarders to have had lessons.  Now, this was literally half my life ago, so you will be putting me on the calmest, gentlest horse you have and we will not be going faster than a trot. Jane is gonna have to ride with you though.  I’m sure you’ll manage.”

And that had been that.  They had slowly, painstakingly made their way through the forest, which was huge and dense and Old, like something out of Tolkien’s wet dreams, finally arriving at the retreat a good two hours later than planned.  The warriors dos were bored out of their gourds (well, Fandral was obviously bored and increasingly obnoxious.  Hogun continued to be impossible to read.) and both she and Jane had redefined ‘saddle sore’.  Darcy more so than Jane because Darcy had not had a nice, warm, muscley backrest to help support her.  She was pretty sure Sir Smarmodon would have happily volunteered to let her ride with him but like hell was she giving him an excuse to put his pervy hands all over her.  She would much prefer her ass be bruised from bumping around in the saddle than from incessant pinching.

Frigga had welcomed them warmly before tutting at Thor and bustling Jane and Darcy off to a hot bath and a soft bed. That had been almost a week ago. Thor’s mom turned out to be as kind and gracious as his dad was grumpy and overbearing, and was quickly turning into one of Darcy’s favorite people ever.  She would shoo Thor and the guys off in the mornings after breakfast to go do guy stuff and the three women would have the place to themselves until after lunch.  On the very first day, Frigga had taken their measurements and set to work altering some spare riding breeches for the younger women while they talked, so that they wouldn’t have to try getting back on the horses in jeans that had never been suitable for riding in the first place and were now, at least in Jane’s case, one step shy of being scrapped for cleaning rags. 

The boys were always back in time for a lateish lunch after which Jane and Thor usually wandered off together and Darcy would alternate between reading on her Starkphone, letting Hogun and Fandral teach her some basic sword and staff fighting techniques - Hogun offered to let her try his mace, but she was kind of terrified that she would  bash her own head in- and talking with Frigga about inter-realm politics.   Despite the Queen being perfectly discreet and diplomatic, Darcy was even more convinced now that Asgard as a whole was in fact massively racist and for all their advanced technology, had maintained the status quo by enforcing a highly restrictive set of social mores and class expectations that made Darcy kind of angry just to consider.  Frigga, however, had risen very quickly to the upper ranks of Darcy’s Favorite People Ever.

As soon as their new riding pants were finished though, Jane had dragged Darcy out to to the stables citing a desire never to spend that long on Thor’s lap without being able to do something about it again. Complete with fire engine red blushing. And so for the last three mornings, while the guys were out doing… whatever it was they were doing (hunting? Fishing? Training? Competative dick waving?) the girls were trying to master the art of not falling off of horses.  Darcy was having a much better time of it than Jane, despite Frigga coming out with them the first two mornings as a vastly more experienced teacher. When her majesty had begged off on the third morning, citing her continuing need for rest and recuperation post impalement, Darcy would have been perfectly happy taking a day off to rest herself, but Jane, in the absence of Science! to hyperfocus on was determined to get as much practice in as she could and Darcy wasn't about to let her go off on her own with the very real possibility of falling and breaking something with no one there to help.  

And so here they were, sore and tired, farther out in the forest than Darcy had intended to get, maybe, possibly the tiniest bit lost and Jane was still bumping along in the saddle like a sack of potatoes with a look of pigheaded determination on her face.  Darcy had been quietly trying to lead them back to the lodge since the sky had unexpectedly clouded over twenty minutes ago but nothing was looking familiar and she was lowkey trying not to panic that she might have gotten them lost.  

As the temperature began dropping and low fog started to rise from the forest floor, the horses, two of the most docile, well trained animals she’d ever encountered, started to grow restless. Darcy was about three seconds from freaking the fuck out herself  because this was starting to look a lot like a horror movie intro and even Jane was beginning to look concerned. Then the noises started. Little rustling noises in the underbrush coming from what seemed to all directions at once. The horses were practically dancing in place now and Darcy scarcely had time to warn Jane to hold tight before a distinctly canid howl split the air around them and both horses bolted in opposite directions. 

It was all Darcy could do to stay in the saddle as the normally placid mare beneath her galloped away in sheer terror, not stopping for all of Darcy’s frantic tugs at the reins until the lodge and stable had come back into view.  

She didn’t so much dismount as she deliberately fell off the horse. It was something of a miracle that she managed to get both feet on the same side of the animal and both pointed at the ground before her arms gave out and she dropped in a trembling heap to the ground outside the stables, frozen in shock for far too long.  Her legs recovered before her voice did, and she wobbled her way inside to Frigga’s room, pounding on the door and fell, sobbing into the Queen’s arms when she answered.

“Jane! I lost Jane!”


	3. Track 3 - The Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rescue party, a return, and a story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee! Less than a month!  
> I want to thank you all for all overwhelmingly positive response to this, and I promise I will be writing on it just as fast as my depression allows.  
> I'm also almost always willing to talk meta about my fics if you have any questions ^_^. Hit me up in the comments or on my tumblr, where my url is also Whyndancer.

It was hours before Thor and the Warriors got back, despite Frigga’s fancy computer free instant messaging spell. They had apparently gone out hunting that early that morning and had chased their quarry significantly farther afield than they usually went.  Even when they got back they could not set out immediately because their horses were exhausted and would need at least an hour, even with healing and refreshing spells.  While they waited they gathered supplies and questioned Darcy relentlessly as to which way they thought Jane had gone.

“I don’t knooooow,” she wailed through fresh tears. “We were already kind of lost and then it suddenly started getting all dark and scary and it sounded like a wolf howling and the horses bolted and all I could do was hang on.” She scrubbed at her eyes and sniffed, desperately trying not to lose it completely. Again. “I don’t even know how long she ran to get back here.”

“Darcy.” She looked up at that because Thor’s voice had suddenly taken on a queer intensity that she didn’t think she ever heard from him before.  The look on his face had gone from frantic to focused and intent and that frightened her all over again.

“Darcy,” he began, in a voice as grave as she had ever heard from him, “I understand that you do not know where you were exactly when the horses ran, but do you at least recall which direction you set out in when you left this morning?”

“I.. yes.” Finally, a question she could actually answer. “Frigga wasn’t coming with us today so I tried to pick a landmark we could see through the trees.  I mean, the trees wound up getting _even thicker_ so it didn’t help much, but we rode out toward the closest mountain. You know, the one with the weird peak?”

Thor’s expression, cliched as the thought might be, grew thunderous.  It was like her answer had been both expected and unwanted. He stood at once from where he’d been crouched in front of her and wheeled to meet Frigga’s suddenly stricken gaze.  Something unspoken passed between them then, and Frigga, despite her obvious exhaustion, stood. “I will contact Heimdall immediately.” Her voice was filled with a pained resignation made Darcy ache just to hear.

Before she could even begin the spell though, Hogun’s head snapped up and he bit out a terse, “ _Listen_!”

And sure enough, as soon as they had all shut up,  the sound of a horse approaching at a breakneck pace cut through the silence like a beacon of light on a moonless night.  There was a mad scramble as four out of five people in the room rushed the doors, peering desperately through the trees in the shadow of the towering mountain beyond.  One breath, then another as the sound continued to grow louder, and then everyone was shouting as Jane’s horse appeared from behind one of the largest trees, galloping like the very devil was after him, with Jane pressed flat against his neck, clutching desperately to his mane.

Even with the distance between them already closing rapidly, Thor’s patience had apparently hit it’s limit and he dashed out, practically throwing himself towards Jane. Being charged by an armed warrior was the last straw for the terrified geldling and it bucked and reared, finally throwing Jane off it’s back. Luckily, Thor had reached the horse by then and managed to catch her before she hit the ground, and quickly rolled with her out of the way of descending hooves.  Fandral and Hogun were close behind him, and Hogun managed to catch hold of the poor animal’s bridle and pull a fucking horse whisperer, somehow calming it enough in less than ten seconds that he could lead it away from where Thor was curled around the comparatively tiny scientist.

As soon as there was no real danger of being trampled to death, Darcy darted out as well, _literally_ throwing herself at the couple, being careful to land mostly on Thor in case Jane was hurt. Maybe if she wasn’t still so scared and now so damn relieved she’d feel like she was intruding, but she needed physical contact with her best friend/ sister by choice and neither Jane nor Thor seemed to mind. At least not enough to say or do anything about it, and then Jane's hand came up and caught hold of Darcy's sleeve, and Darcy knew she wasn’t intruding at all.

The three of them lay there holding on to each other until Jane’s breathing slowed from ragged sobbing to soft weeping. Then, slowly, carefully, Thor rolled them all up into a sitting position first and then lifted Jane against himself with one arm as he stood, helping Darcy up with the other, and they all together went inside.

*****************************************

Despite everyone’s alternating protests and reassurances, Jane insisted on speaking to them as soon as she’d calmed down enough.  As she’d proven to be unharmed aside from a collection of minor scrapes and scratches, Thor reluctantly set her up on one of the chairs in the main room with lots of pillows to prop her up and a cup in her hands filled from the pot of hot tea that Frigga had brewed. Well, it wasn’t technically tea, seeing as the herb that had been brewed had never been grown on earth, and it had a proper Asgardian name that Darcy was sure she would remember at the most useless possible time but for now she was gonna keep calling it tea, because ‘hot herb water’ just sounded gross, and this stuff was actually pretty darn tasty.

Jane, however, seemed more interested in staring into the depths of the cup like it could tell her the secrets of the universe than in actually drinking it.  Her eyes were still red and puffy and she seemed like she was about 5 seconds from breaking down crying again. Darcy was just about to go over and try and get her to go lie down again, when she gave a great, shuddering sigh and began to speak.

“I don’t… I’m not sure really how to begin, I’m not really a very good storyteller.”

Thor shifted on the seat, sliding in closer to Jane and wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her hair.

“We begin, my Jane, at the beginning. For this story, the beginning we need is what happened to you when the horses spooked.  Where did he take you?” His voice was gentle and calming, and it seemed to steady Jane a bit.

“Right.  Well, when the horse started running, I was really too busy holding on to pay much attention to where we were going, I mean, it was going so fast and everything was a blur and I think I had my face buried in it’s mane most of the time, but when he finally slowed down, it was actually pretty obvious where we were. That mountain really has a very unique peak.”  While Jane didn’t seem to notice how Thor’s free hand clenched at his hip, despite Mjolnir being across the room, but Darcy definitely did, and combined with his reaction to her mentioning heading toward the mountain before Jane came back, it gave her the feeling that Thor knew that something about that mountain was bad news.  Jane continued her story, words flowing now in a swift, unstoppable jumble, like water from a broken dam.

“It was really strange though, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t that high up the mountain, but it had gotten so much colder and there was a light snow falling.  The horse kept walking towards the mountain even when I tried to get it to stop, and then all of a sudden it _did_ stop and when I looked I realized that we were actually at a gate and there was a wall on either side and it looked like there was something built into the base of the cliff and the gate was open, and I know I shouldn’t have gone in, but the I couldn’t get the horse to go anywhere, but I was cold and everything was so strange.  And then past the gate there was an open area, I guess it was like a courtyard or something? And there was all this ice in the courtyard! And not like just icicles or patches on the ground or even chunks, it was like a garden of ice sculptures. And some of it was so clear and delicate that it looked more like glass and all of it was beautiful even the ones that looked like monsters.  In the very middle, at least I think it was the middle I didn’t have anything to measure, but anyway in the middle there was an ice rosebush or whatever looks like rosebushes here, and it was so perfect and delicate and precise and _god_ I should know better after the aether, but I wasn’t really even thinking about it and my hand just reached out, and I didn’t think it was close enough to touch, but there was a thorn…” It hadn’t registered before, but now Darcy’s eyes were drawn to Jane’s fingers on the cup, specifically the index finger of her right hand, which she was rubbing back and forth on the outside of the cup, as though she was easing a sore spot.  Darcy was getting less happy with where this story was going by the minute.

“I didn’t even realize that I’d actually touched it until I was bleeding.” Well, fuck.

“And then the rose, it was so strange, it was like the ice sucked up my blood, more that could be accounted for by capillary action, and faster, and all the flowers went red.” Jane’s voice had gotten all small and quiet and the words weren’t coming as fast now. “And that’s when I heard him.”  

Frigga went white. Thor went red. Hogun looked grim, though his expression hadn’t actually changed in the last hour. Fandral, at least, looked almost as confused as Darcy felt.  When the story seemed to have stalled out, Darcy gently prompted Jane to continue. “Heard who, Jane?”

“I don’t….” Jane nibbled at her lip. “The voice was strange, I didn’t exactly recognize it, but it was familiar and…he called me ‘Thor’s mortal pet’, and then he called Thor an oaf…  I never actually saw him, and I know he’s supposed to be dead, but I think it was Loki.”

Darcy was going to go out on a limb here and say that Loki probably wasn’t as dead as previously reported, because she’d eat her iPod if Thor and Frigga were even an iota surprised at that revelation. Also, double fuck.

“What all did he say, Jane.” It was actually pretty impressive, especially for Thor, how even he managed to keep his voice, considering the fact that his face screamed _murder._

“He said I was trespassing. But then he thanked me… said he’d been ‘rather bored’ and now at least he’d have a bit of entertainment, that my blood, which he only had because I was trying to touch something that didn’t belong to me, had bound me there.  He said that I was even welcome to take one last night to tell you what happened and gather my things, but that if I wasn’t back by sundown tomorrow, me or someone willing to take my place, he made a big deal about that, that the bindings would kill me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I I place the blame for any incoherencies in the narrative here squarely on Jane's shoulders. I love her to death, but a storyteller she is not. We _will_ see Loki in person in the next chapter, and so will Darcy!


	4. Track 4 - Take me instead.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just about a month again. Well, I'm getting some help for my depression finally and with any luck that will help me get the next bit out faster, but I'm definitely going to try and keep to a minimum of 1 chapter a month.  
> A minor edit was made to the end of last chapter for continuity.

Darcy lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling of the darkened guestroom she’d been staying in, contemplating the absolutely fucking idiotic thing she was about to do.

Following Jane’s ultradramatic Revelation of Doom, Gloom and Contender for the Shittiest Sibling in History Award, any hope of a quiet evening to recover had pretty much gone tits up.  There had been a ton of blustering, a lot of bellowing, and at least six threats of bloody vengeance by four out of the six people in the room, including Darcy, until Frigga silenced everyone with a  single, regal wave of her hand as she stood from her chair and walked solemnly across the room to Jane.  Thor was ousted, if somewhat reluctantly, from his place next to Jane with a single look from his mother, and she took his place with a heavy sigh.She angled herself so that she was facing Jane as much as possible on the sofa, and extended a hand toward her, palm up in entreaty.

“May I see your hand my dear?”

Jane turned in to face the queen and hesitantly offered up the hand she’d been cradling since she’d set down her tea cup.  

Frigga had held it gently between her own, murmuring softly until a soft field of light grew around it, all soft golden motes except for a line of deepest red, extending from the tip of her longest finger, down the center of her palm. She’d made a low noise of distress in the back of her throat, one that Darcy barely caught from her chair only a few feet away, and the tone of her mutterings shifted.  The golden specks faded out, leaving only the red line, which continued to extend, snaking around Jane’s wrist in strange patterns before moving on down her forearm and then up, past her shoulder and across her chest, pooling menacingly just to the left of Jane’s sternum.  It didn’t take an expert in magic to guess that this was Frigga’s way of verifying the aforementioned curse, and that the news was not good.  The deep red light had intensified a moment tingeing toward black for a moment before dimming, and finally subsiding.  

Jane had gone white with terror, her voice shaking as she spoke her thoughts. “It looks almost like the aether again. I thought that was gone.”

Frigga had looked more exhausted that Darcy had seen her yet, and somewhat pained as she answered.  “I sense no trace of the aether in you.  It is mere coincidence that the colors were alike, for what you just saw is the mark of Blood Magic.  It is an ancient art, all but forbidden in this age, that requires little to no seiðr from the user, but instead pulls directly from the lifeforce of the person whose blood has been used.  It takes a cunning mind and a comprehensive knowledge of spellcraft to use it so deftly and this seems to have been bolstered as well by an artifact of some sort.  The enchantment is strong, if not entirely permanent.  If I had time enough I might be able to break it, but to do so before sundown tomorrow would be impossible even if I were at full strength, and highly improbable even with the help of all the strongest seiðr users in the realm.  If Jane, or someone going freely in her place, does not fulfil the terms of the binding before the sun sets on the morrow, she _will_ die.” She looked up, meeting Thor’s wrathful gaze with a pointed look of her own. “And so will the caster.”

Thor’s face had twisted with a torrent of emotions at that, rage and betrayal now mixing with pain and disbelief, confusion and denial. _He really is an open book_ , Darcy’d thought as she watched him. _Couldn’t be easier to read.  He should probably work on that._

“And what happens if I go back?” Having been reassured that the aether was not making a reappearance, Jane’s voice had evened out, and Darcy’s been able to  hear the steely edge of the scientists own growing anger.  

“As best I can see, whoever returns to complete the contract will be bound to the caster, unable to be more than a certain distance away, as though linked by an invisible chain.  Forcible separation would result, again, in the death of both parties.  By the look of the casting, he will not be able to harm you without harming himself, and vice versa, and if I am reading it correctly, the spell will gradually weaken over time and dissolve on it’s own. It would not be so very long for one of us, but… I would guess around fifty of your years.”

“So a lifetime.” Darcy hadn’t even realized she was speaking out loud, didn’t remember standing up and so was just as startled as the rest of the room when she jumped in.  Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.  “So your asshole adopted son, who was supposed to be dead, _again_ , just happens to be out here by your vacation home, snags Jane with creepy fucking _blood magic_ so that she’s stuck with him _for the rest of her life!!!_ ”  She’d kept getting louder with every word until she was nearly screaming. “Why?!? Why would he even do that? I mean, what the hell?!?”

“Darcy.” Jane’s voice had gone soft again, though there was still anger and now grief in it. “I don’t think the why really matters very much right now.”

At that, all the fight had drained out of Darcy and she’d stumbled forward, collapsing against the sofa on Jane’s other side. The two of them had clung to each other for a while, weeping again - quieter tears this time, tears of anger and grief and still fear, though a different kind of fear than the the terror of earlier that day.

There had been more yelling around them and angry, whispered discussions that were still loud enough to hear every word of if you made an effort, which neither of them bothered to do.  Eventually they had all drifted off to bed, though for Darcy, at least, sleep was so very much not in the cards.  Her mind kept turning over the situation and going over the things she expected to happen tomorrow.  

Thor was going to try and take Jane’s place.  She knew this as surely as she knew every lyric to every Disney song ever written.  He was kind of stupidly noble like that, on top of the fact that he would never in a million years be willing to let Jane anywhere near his shithead of a little brother if he could possibly help it.  Obviously a memo had been missed when no one had so much as suggested steering clear of The Mountain. This was probably the worst possible outcome, because if Darcy had to take a guess, it was very likely to be exactly what Loki was aiming for.  Also, Thor was really kind of needed in a lot of places. As a prince of Asgard a defender of Earth, it would really really suck if he had to take a forced fifty year sabbatical. Not to mention the very real possibility that the brothers would wind up literally killing each other long before the time limit was up.  Definitely an outcome to be avoided.

Frigga might be willing to make the switch, but the likelihood of that going over well with literally anyone was zero to none.   And again. She was the Queen of an entire realm - far too important to be stuck with a psycho for fifty years.

Darcy doesn’t know Fandral and Hogan well enough to be certain, but going by their reactions and the way they talked about Loki, even if they were willing to take Jane’s place, both Loki and whoever went would probably be dead in under a week.  

And as for the idea of Jane staying? Hells to the fuck no. Jane was due in Stockholm to accept a goddamn Nobel prize in just over 3 weeks.  They’d got the announcement shortly before leaving for Asgard and being here was probably the only thing keeping Jane from spending every waking moment on her speech.  Jane was finally, _finally_ getting the recognition, respect and funding that she’d spent her entire adult life and a good part of her teen years fighting for.

So that really only left one option. Darcy was going to have to go in Jane’s place. It was an enormously shitty option to be sure, but honestly all the options were shitty at this point and this one seemed to have the least fallout.  And it wasn’t like she didn’t think she was important too.  She just wasn’t _as_ important as anyone else here.  She had plans, but they’d already been long derailed by space vikings and creepy elves and Science!, so it wasn’t really that much of a loss.  She had very little close family and with any luck there was at least some sort of semi regular delivery to Loki’s… wherever it was they’d stuck him this time, and she could keep in touch and  get some further entertainment and maybe even finish her degree via correspondence course, cause gods knew it looked like she’d have enough time to do all the reading and writing she wanted. Tony Stark’s random gift of Starkphone and solar charger had just gotten a thousand times more useful.  So finger’s crossed for some sort of regular communication with the outside world and finger’s crossed that Loki wouldn’t think she was worth hurting if it meant hurting himself too.  

This was going to suck so hard.

And so, in the middle of the night, when the rest of the house had been quite long enough to suggest that the others were asleep, Darcy grabbed her bags and headed for the stables.  

She had at least one piece of luck right off the bat.  Two of Asgard’s moons - the big blue-white one and the slightly smaller reddish one were out and bright in the sky, which was as clear as could be, with not a trace of the earlier cloudiness remaining. The snowy tip of the odd mountain that was the likely location of Loki’s Lair (gratuitous alliteration might not be the best coping mechanism, but beggars couldn’t be choosers) was shining like a beacon in the oddly violet light.  

For three hours she guided her horse through the forest toward the glimmering peak, at times nearly losing sight of it through the dense canopy but keeping her course as best she could until she caught another glimpse of it to guide her.  Shortly into hour four the trees abruptly thinned and the terrain gave way to a rocky incline.  She could see the remnants of a positively ancient path picking its way through the larger rocks and gravel banks in the same general direction as her destination.  The sun was rising by then, thank gods, because the going here was scary enough that the idea of trying to travel this path in the dark made her a little nauseous. In a patch of softer earth (can she still call it earth if it’s on another planet?!? Should she just call it dirt? A patch of softer asgard?)  a little ways up the path she could see fairly fresh hoof prints both coming and going, and she took that as much needed confirmation that she was going the right way.

The path led into a narrow valley between increasingly craggy hills that got higher and higher on either side til she was traveling along the bottom of a ravine. She turned a corner and, rather suddenly, there was The Wall that Jane had mentioned.  It rose abruptly from the floor of the ravine against the backdrop of an even more imposing cliff face. It was made of the same dark stone as the cliffs around it and she could see arrow slits scattered across the surface, and if she craned her neck all the way back she thought she could make out parapets and crenellations. (She may have had a phase as a little girl when she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a knight or a princess or both. In the ineffable logic of an eight year old she’d figured that either way she needed to know about castles.)  

The doors, massive slabs of weathered metal, were open. Barely cracked, relative to their size, but that crack was still more than wide enough for a horse and rider to pass through. Her horse though, so compliant up to this point, was having none of it.  She shied and stopped dead as soon as Darcy tried to lead her through the gap and actually started backing up until Darcy turned her away and slid off her back to the side.  As much as she would have preferred to use the horse as a security blanket a little bit longer, the journey was ninety-five percent over and it wouldn’t be fair to keep her here - there was no telling if there would be anyway to take care of her.  So Darcy unhooked the saddlebags and chucked them one-by-one through the door, petted the horse one more time and fed her the apple she’d brought for her before giving her a good smack on the rump.  It worked just like she’d seen in the movies, the horse taking off they way they’d come at a fast canter.  

She turned back to the doors, squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and stepped through. She came out in what looked like a courtyard of sorts, though with the walls rising high above on all sides it felt more like she was at the bottom of an enormous well. The light was still dim here, though the sun had been up for a while, it would have to be pretty much overhead to reach this sheltered spot. There was a fortress carved into the cliff wall on the other side, and in the space between, just as Jane had said, there was ice.  Dozens of enormous ice pillars with intricate sculptures scattered amongst them.  She tucked her bags into a small alcove in the outer wall and moved carefully toward the center. It didn’t seem like it should be cold enough to keep the ice from melting, but when she put her hand out toward one (being careful not to actually touch it) she could feel a bitter cold radiating off if.  She started to notice that some of the sculptures had been smashed or broken in places, bodies without heads or limbs, graceful curves that ended abruptly in jagged edges.

The silence of the courtyard was suddenly broken by the scraping of a door, and she knew she was about to have company. She could see her target though, just a few steps away there was the most elaborate sculpture she’d seen yet, an enormous rosebush, with single perfect rose right in front of her, streaked with the only color she’d seen in this place - a deep, blood red.

She ran the last few steps, stretching a bare hand out in front of her to touch the thorns even as she slowed to a stop in front of it.  The prick was deep and painful, right in the pad of the ball of her hand, and she could see her blood moving through the thorn and up the stem, as lines of red light wrapped themselves around her.

The red light was sending tendrils out to the other side of the bush, past the ring of pillars surrounding it to a dark figure that was walking up on the other side. The tall form stopped before she could see it properly, and a low, angry growl echoed among the ice.

_“What have you done!?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much random research for this chapter. There's no canonical evidence that I can that shows Asgard with any sort of moons. I think there's one in a promo pic, but none that I saw in the movies themselves. So I excersized author's perogative and gave it three.  
> And look! It's Loki! He really did make it into this chapter! (Barely)  
> New tags were inspired by (stolen from)[this.](https://whyndancer.tumblr.com/post/165779923197/ao3tags-tale-as-old-as-time-burn-as-slow-as)


	5. Track 5 - The Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A confrontation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!!!  
> An Important edit has been made to the Prologue. It's something that I had always meant to include, but got lost in revising. 
> 
> This wound up being a short chapter, but it was such hard one to write, and for a very specific reason.  
> Additional authors notes below the chapter to avoid spoilers.  
> For anyone who may have triggers, be warned that Loki does get violent in this chapter.
> 
> Also, I am aware that Frost Giants do not have horns in the MCU but this is fanfic and I want them to have horns.

_ “What have you done!?” _

Darcy gulped. Then she squared her shoulders and straightened her spine and looked right at the skulking shadow.  “I’m pretty sure I just completed your binding contract.”

“You…” He growled, prowling around the edge of the circle, still just out of sight. Darcy couldn’t help but flinch when, with a great grinding crunch, he shattered one of the ice sculptures nearest him.  The fragments scattered at her feet with a crystalline clatter, and Darcy was proud of herself for not taking a step back. “How  _ dare _ you! You’ve ruined everything!” The words were snarled at her like claws from the shadows.

They fell rather short of their intended effect as Darcy was suddenly too busy being incensed to bother being frightened.

“How dare  _ I _ ?  _ I’ve _ ruined everything?  _ I’m  _ not the shithead who’s so fucking desperate to mess with my brother that I put a fucking blood magic bondage curse on his girlfriend!”  There was a tiny voice in the back of her head reminding her that this was probably not the smartest way to talk to the supervillain that she was stuck with for the rest of her life, but she was pretty sure he had just murdered her last available fuck with that bit of bullshit. “I’m just the one who’s stuck with your shitty ass for probably the rest of my natural life.”

There was more snarling, and another sculpture shattered out of sight.  “I didn’t want  _ you _ !  _ You _ were not supposed to complete the contract.”

“Ha!” The sound burst from her mouth with more vindictive pleasure than humor. “That’s the biggest reason I did it!”

“They sent you to spite me, then?” Another statue fell. “Has Thor gone back to foisting his responsibilities off on others again? What could he possibly offer you to make you give up the scant few years of your mortal life? Or did he threaten? Not entirely uncharacteristic, but not exactly in keeping with his softness as of late. Perhaps one of the others threatened you on his behalf?”

“Oh fuck you. I didn’t come for Thor’s sake.” The shadow stopped moving. “At least not mainly. I came for Jane.”

“I see,” he sneered. “How fortunate that Thor’s woman should have such a devoted servant. Or are you simply that gullible? Did they tell you they’d be able to get you out soon?”

“Yeah, no. I’m perfectly aware that my chances of getting out of this before I need a walker are slim to none.” Darcy glared at the shadowy form. “And I’m Jane’s  _ assistant _ , not her servant. And I didn’t do this as her assistant. I did it as her friend.”

“Sentiment.” His voice dripped with disdain. “How pathetic.”

“Yeah, well, there were no  _ good  _ choices to take Jane’s place. I was just the least terrible choice, and I will be damned if Jane is forced to give up everything she’s worked so hard for, when she’s so close, if there is any way for me to prevent it.”

“How noble of you. To give up all your own dreams and ambitions, your very life for this woman.  I suppose you are simply aware that you are inferior in every way.” He was being so snide and condescending that if he’d been in range she would have kicked him in the nuts, shared pain or no. 

“For the love of Dolly Parton’s left tit, could you  _ be  _ any more of a jackass!? Jane is older and more driven than I am so, yeah, she’s going to be closer to achieving major life goals. I’m still figuring shit out so I can still adjust to accomplish some badass goals in social isolation. So my life may be changing but I haven’t given up on it completely.”

He laughed then, a dark and bitter thing that sent chills up her spine. “You think they’ll come to visit you. How absurdly naive. Putting aside the fact that Odin will no doubt  _ ‘expressly forbid it’, _ why do you think you’ll even be here to be seen? What makes you think I won’t kill you where you stand for getting in my way?”

The terror she had been so desperately stomping down, reasoning away and outright ignoring practically since the horses had first spooked yesterday morning came climbing up her throat and setting her voice to shaking no matter how hard she tried to stop it. “The… the blood bond. You can’t hurt me without hurting yourself. I mean, yeah, I know I’m annoying and all, but I’m pretty sure I’m not worth killing yourself over. Right?” 

That awful laugh was back again, louder now and echoing around the courtyard so that she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.  She spun from side to side trying to find the shadowy form she’d lost track of. Shards of ice crunched under her feet as she moved, stepping slowly backwards towards one of the tall columns around her, desperate to have something at her back.  After just a few steps, though, she backed into something that was definitely  _ not _ a column, despite being as cold as one.  There was a moment of terrifying stillness, and then his voice hissing in her ear.

_ “Monsters don’t die so easily as that.” _

Even as she spun to face him, there was a hand around her throat lifting her off her feet to dangle helplessly from his grip, her own hands flying up to claw fruitlessly at the ice cold fingers round her neck. As she waited for him to snap her neck like a twig, she looked down the unexpectedly blue arm into the blood red eyes and vicious, fanged snarl of her death. A distant, detached part of her brain wondered if this was  actually Loki, or if maybe they’d all got it wrong.  She’d seen footage from New York, and Thor had shown her other pictures, and while the brothers had never really looked much alike, they definitely hadn’t looked  _ this  _ different. 

The moment dragged on, but the pressure of his hand never increased, remaining at a level that was uncomfortable but not painful, and certainly not enough to kill her. Below her, the cobalt blue features of her attacker twisted in confusion then smoothed out in an obvious ‘aha’ moment before dropping her like a sack of potatoes.

Darcy wasted no time in scrambling as far away from him as she could get without taking her eyes off of him, finally able to get a good look at him.  He stood right where she’d backed into him, unmoving, his hands - tipped with short, sharp black claws - hung limp at his sides. He wore nothing but a pair of loose, ragged cloth pants and a tattered fur around his shoulders, which were hunched and tense, his head hanging down. A tangled snarl of long black hair fell forward and partly obscured his face, despite the three inch horns that curled up from high on his forehead.  Every inch of his skin was a deep, blueberry blue with the exception of strange raised lines in curving, geometric patterns all over his body.

She wasn’t sure what to think when his shoulders began to shake, not sure if it was a good sign or a bad sign, really not quite sure of anything. And then he began to laugh. Quietly at first, then louder and louder, wild and manic and tinged with despair, and Darcy knew, without a doubt that he was completely, bat-shit insane.  

“I suppose you’ve gotten lucky after all, little mortal.” She jumped when he addressed her. “One of the perils of working with unfamiliar magic is that it may have unintended side effects. In this case, it seems that the blood bond physically prevents me from harming you. So you get to live. On the downside, that means that you are in fact stuck here with the monster.” He looked up then, meeting her fearful gaze with a sardonic little smirk. “It looks like you’ll have time to regret your choice properly.” 

And with that he stalked off, disappearing through a door in the side of the mountain, leaving it open behind him.

Darcy didn’t move for what seemed like hours, though it was probably less, until the shards of ice she’d wound up sitting on had melted beneath her, soaking through even the thick riding pants she was wearing.  When she started to shiver from the cold and damp, she shook her head to clear it and pulled herself together enough to collect her pack from the outer wall, and make her way toward the still open door on the other side of the courtyard.  She’d come back for the saddlebags later. 

She hesitated before crossing the threshold. Really, the last thing she wanted was to follow him anywhere, but she couldn’t stay out in the cold forever either.  She peered down the dim hallway leading inward from the door, squared her shoulders and stepped through.

_ Holy shit Darcy, what the fuck have you gotten yourself into? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you how long I went back and forth over Loki's reaction. The last thing I want to do is write Darcy into an abusive relationship, or to excuse abuse or violence in a relationship. But there are Things going on with Loki that meant I couldn't see him having a less drastic reaction. And I promise that this is not just going to go away. It's not going to be easily smoothed over or forgotten, because even though there are Reasons, Darcy is under no obligation to forgive him.  
> I will do my best to do this issue justice in coming chapters.  
> We're getting into the real meat of the story now and they've got a long way to go.


	6. Track 6 - A Storm Approaches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy explores her new home, and has a visitor. Loki continues to be a less than gracious host.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have made my way here, past the Swamp of Depression and the Great Wall of Executive Dysfunction to bring you this humble offering. Enjoy. (please)

The hallway wound up being not nearly as long as it had looked from outside, ending in a T intersection where both the left and right paths were stairs going up. After a moment of blank indecision she shrugged and went right, because she was right handed and at this point it didn’t really matter what direction she took, just so long as she wasn’t standing forever at the bottom of the stairs. Somewhere around halfway up the obnoxiously long staircase it occurred to Darcy that it really should be darker in here by now. Though it wasn’t exactly bright in the stairwell, considering the fact that there were no apparent light sources and no real shadows to give her a clue, she was have no trouble at all seeing the worn stone stairs rising ahead of her.

The stairway ended in a landing which opened on the left into what seemed to be an enormous hall that curved away on either side, just as unsettlingly Not Dark as the stairs had been.  The ceiling arched up and away, not quite soaring, but high enough that it was dim and indistinct in the eerie artificial twilight. Her footsteps echoed in the open space, the hard soles of her riding boots loud against the stone floor. She could just make out the outlines of a number of large doorways on either side of the hall in both directions.  Deciding that since she’d started out going right, it probably wouldn’t be the worst idea to keep going right until common sense dictated otherwise, she trudged off down the hall. Conveniently, this took her to the largest and nearest of the doorways that she had seen from the top of the stairs. This turn, her third right, took her down another hallway, straight this time and smaller than the last, though still more than large enough for an eighteen-wheeler to pass without trouble.  

This second hallway, well, third if she counted the hall from the outside door to the stairs, continued on in a straight line for significantly longer than she’d spent in the big main hall, before abruptly taking a hard left turn at a large pair of double doors.  She looked for a handle of some kind, and when no such thing was apparent pushed against them to see if they’d move, because if she was going to keep to the right-hand rule, she might as well be thorough. Despite her best efforts, the doors remained firmly shut, so she made the left turn and trudged on.

By some miracle the second door she tried, only about fifty-ish feet (she’d never claimed to be great at judging distance) farther down the hall, opened easily, revealing a long, wide bench along one wall that still had cushions piled on it. Darcy poked them cautiously, then smacked them harder to test them but they seemed to be magically free of dust, somehow still soft and cushy after gods knew how long since being abandoned.  Come to think of it, it probably was actual magic keeping them intact, considering her current location. She piled a bunch of the cushions into a nest in the corner, pulled her boots off and curled up in the middle of the pile, pulling her cloak tight around her. Her lack of sleep the night before was catching up to her, but she was still kind of wired from her faceoff with the crazy, violent villain and each breath she took was shakier than the last. Her vision blurred and when she blinked to try and clear it, she realized that she was crying.

Once she realized that she was already crying it was like a dam broke, and all the pain and grief and fear of the last two days came pouring out in great shuddering, keening sobs and a veritable flood of tears.  She cried for Jane, for Thor and Frigga, and she cried for herself. For everything she’d never get to do or see. For all the opportunities that she’d never get. She’d never have the chance now to make a name for herself - to change the world. She cried and cried until the river of her tears dragged her down into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion.

* * *

*************************************************

When she finally woke, it was to a crick in her neck and dry, achy eyes.  She reached up to rub the sleep out of them, but froze even before her fingers made it all the way there.

“Fuck! My contacts!”

She scrambled for her backpack and dug frantically through the front pockets for her eyedrops, grimacing as she realized how grubby her hands were.  As she was looking for the wet wipes that she was ninety percent sure she’d jammed somewhere in her bag, she finally woke up enough to register the sound of trickling water from somewhere nearby. Glancing again at the grossness of her hands, she decided that the sound was worth investigating.  

Along the wall opposite the built-in benches that she'd slept on was a long counter with shelving above it.  It kind of reminded her a little of a kitchen counter or maybe a lab counter. She walked down the middle of the room, between the benches and the counter until she reached the far end of the long room. The benches had split halfway down to allow access to two adjacent but unconnected doors which she had passed up in favor of trying to find where the sound of the water was coming from, as it had gotten louder the farther into the room she went.  It wasn't until she'd gotten almost all the up to what she'd thought was another counter along the back wall that she realized it was more of a raised trench than a counter, and running along the bottom of the trench was a stream of crystal clear water. Darcy hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was a good idea to trust untested water on an alien planet, but the desire for clean hands won out pretty quickly. Besides, after coming out of the confrontation with Loki at least physically unscathed, she was willing to bet that a little water wasn't going to do her much harm.  

The water was just this side of cool when she dipped a finger in, and felt absolutely wonderful. She stripped off the long riding coat thing that Frigga had lent her at the beginning of the week and pushed the sleeves of her undershirt as far up as they would go so that she could scrub her arms up to the elbow, and then splashed a little water on her face for good measure.  A shower would still be super awesome, but at least she didn't feel quite as gross and grimy. She went back to her little nest to get her bag and eyecare stuff so that she could finally get the damn contacts out. Today was totally going to have to be a glasses day. 

With her vision issues sorted for the time being Darcy wandered back to the two smaller doors she'd passed on her way to the water trough thingy.   They both swung open easily enough but the rooms beyond them were nearly pitch black and she wasn't up for stumbling around with only a hand held light unless there was no other option.  Back to exploring the hallways it was.

Darcy contemplated leaving her bag in the water room but decided that she should probably keep as much with her as possible until she knew she could find her way back.  And that the rooms and pathways weren't about to start moving around on her like the ones in Labyrinth.

She gathered her things, tucking the legs of the damp pants into the top her bag, letting the rest of it hang down to dry, and headed back to the door she'd come in.  She turned right down the hall... and screamed. 

Mere inches away the bogeyman himself loomed over her- tall, blue and menacing.  He glared down at her, a cruel smirk twisting the corner of his lips at her obvious fright. 

"Holy shit, dude, what the hell." She pressed her back up against the wall as she struggled to catch her breath.  As casual as her words were, there was no hiding the fear in her voice as she asked, "What do you want?"

His expression twisted even darker. "It appears you have a visitor."

Before she had a chance to respond he'd grabbed her by the arm and took off, hauling her bodily after him. She tripped along behind him, just barely able to move fast enough to keep up, with no breath left over to protest.  

Quicker than she would have thought possible she found herself back out in the courtyard, being dragged toward the enormous outer door.  The five foot gap she'd come through was gone, and she could barely make out where the doors met in the middle. It might have been easier to spot if there were a little more light, but she had no idea what time of day it might be, and the sky was so dark with storm clouds that she couldn't even begin to guess.  Her captor veered off to the side just before reaching the outer doors and pulled her through a much smaller door in the wall beside them. It opened onto a narrow spiral staircase that wound up being the last straw as far as her balance was concerned. She'd barely managed to follow him down the stairs back down to the courtyard level, these she tripped over almost immediately.  Instead of the painful face plant into stone risers that she expected, however, her fall was quickly halted by the hand still grasping her arm. She looked up just in time to catch a flash of irritation crossing his face before she was snatched up off her feet entirely and tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. 

There was a short, involuntary little shriek that escaped her when she first was hoisted up, and Darcy considered the whole screaming obscenities and beating on his back until he put her down, but he had started taking the stairs three or four at a time now and she was so out of breath from trying to keep up that she was actually kind of wishing he'd picked her up sooner.  Also, one hand was currently occupied with desperately trying to keep her glasses on her face with the other hand hovering on standby, and in any case it kind of seemed like a waste of energy, as she very much doubted that such carrying on would actually get her put down. Come to think of it she was more likely to hurt her own hands in the attempt. Or would the blood-curse-bond thingy prevent that too?

Her musings were cut short when they burst through door that she hadn't seen coming (duh) and she was abruptly dropped on her ass. 

"Here, you witless oaf, your little pet is alive and unharmed despite my best efforts, so you can cease your bellowing and return to your precious Ms. Foster, and your merry band of Midgardian misfits, and stop throwing rocks in my garden!" 

Darcy blinked up at the howling ball of rage next to her, took a second to process the actual words he was saying and scrambled to her feet, peering out into the darkness in the same direction he'd been yelling.  A convenient flash of lightning spread like a spider across the sky, providing enough light for her to make out Thor standing on one of the cliffs at the top of the ravine, still some ways below the top of the wall where she now stood, with a rock the size of a Mini raised above his head.  He seemed to notice her at about the same time, because he dropped the boulder with a tremendous crash and the sky instantly began to lighten, and though the clouds didn't clear completely she could tell now that the sky was still bright behind them.

"Darcy!" The relief in Thor's voice was palpable. It didn't last long though, being replaced in the very next words out of his mouth by the kind of anger that a parent has when their kid has done something stupid and dangerous. "What were you thinking coming out here on your own?!?!  You could have died!" he roared, "And now you are trapped here with Loki for the rest of your life!"

Darcy rolled her eyes. She loved Thor, she really did, but..."Thank you Captain Obvious!  I was actually aware of these things when I made my decision. Did you catch that? Like, thank you for caring and worrying about me but the decision was Mine to make, and arguing about it now is completely fucking pointless.  It's done. Let's move on. Please." 

She could see Thor visibly deflating as she spoke.  She wished she didn't have to be so short with him but she soo did not have the energy to actually get into a fight with him about this.  "Look, I'm safe enough for now... can you, like, come up here or something so we don't have to yell at each other for everything?"

"No." The word came from behind her, sharp and biting.  She turned to face the man that Thor had confirmed to be Loki, who was leaning up against the door frame, his expression now closed and unreadable.  "In addition to binding me to it directly, Odin has encased this entire stronghold with a barrier through which nothing living may pass. To weaken it enough for another to pass through long enough to spring my trap took days and required nearly half the blood in my veins.  I shan't be doing it again. Hence the reason Thor chose to announce himself by hurling a rock into the middle of my courtyard." He pushed himself away from the door and moved past her to the edge of the wall. "By all means, though Thor, ask him to drop the barrier for you, that you might come and console your other little mortal pet.  You will not be able to remove her from this place without killing her. Of course that assumes you could get to her in the first place. Would you be able to keep me from killing you properly without harming me, and thereby harming her? Because make no mistake Thor, as soon as you step foot within these walls it will be my fingers round your neck."

"Ooooookay!" Darcy stepped up alongside Loki, just out of arm's reach, eager to change the subject.  "So, it looks like a hugfest won't be happening anytime soon, but, hey, if non-living stuff can pass through the barrier thing, maybe you and Jane could go pick up some of my stuff from the apartment so I can see about settling in a little better?  And maybe we could get some correspondence going or something?" She quite deliberately kept her eyes on Thor, not wanting to see Loki's reaction.

"Of course my friend," boomed Thor from his perch on the cliff, "anything you should request I will do my level best to bring to you.  Is there anything in particular you would like me to bring first?"

"Um, yes actually... uh, wait a sec."  She really didn't want to take her pack off in case Loki decided to cart her off at a moments notice again, so there was a bit of awkward stretching and reaching but she managed to dig a notebook and pen out the the front pocket.  She scribbled down a quick list of things like clothes and laptop and extra battery packs and books, with a note to Jane at the bottom asking if she'd go ahead and pack up most of Darcy's stuff from the apartment; she’d wait to ask about school and doctor stuff ‘til later. She glanced over at Loki as she was finishing up only to find that at some point during her writing he had silently vanished. Huh.  She pushed that fact to the side in favor of trying to figure out how she was going to get her completed list down to where Thor could get at it. "Hey dude, if I fold this up and drop it, do you think you'll be able to find it down at the bottom of the gate?"

"Aye, Darcy, that should suit." He paused before heading down to catch it, looking back up at her with the saddest face.  " I am so sorry, my little lightning sister, that you have been so cruelly caught up in my family affairs, but I am grateful for what you have done." And with that he turned to make his way down the cliff.  

Darcy waited until she could see him near the bottom of the wall, tiny from this height, before dropping her neatly folded lifeline to the outside world. A moment later Thor waved up at her and all too soon was gone from sight, leaving Darcy to make her way down half a trillion stairs on her own. Damn.

  
  
  
  
  



	7. Track 7 - The Enchanted Castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy discovers that she has an unexpected ally of sorts, and Loki's acting weird, but Darcy's not complaining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a little longer to get out than I would have liked, but hey, not nearly as long as it took to get the last chapter out and this one is the longest one yet.

By the time Darcy made it back down to the courtyard her legs felt like burning jelly and her exhaustion was worse than it had been before she'd had her nap.  It had only been a nap too; the skies had cleared up the rest of the way while she was making her way down the tower and it looked like it was only a couple hours past midday.  Which, to be perfectly frank, was such bull. It felt like it had been days since she'd left the lodge, not hours. And then, adding insult to injury, she managed to trip over the saddlebags she'd left in the courtyard to be retrieved later. Somehow, she kept herself from actually face-planting, but it was a close call.  She looked down at the leather bags that held all the worldly possessions she could count on ever having for the rest of her life, (sure Thor was going to try and bring more, but so many things could go wrong with that that she wasn't about to start counting unhatched chickens in that basket) and back up at the recently clear sky and around at all the ice statues and... boulders? She blinked hard and even pulled her glasses off to wipe them down, but sure enough there were about a dozen boulders of compact car size visible from where she stood, where she was ninety-eight percent sure there had been no such things before.  Also, like, three of them were surrounded by shattered ice, and they were all sitting in small craters. Apparently the rock that Thor had been brandishing was one of many. Was this what Loki had meant about throwing rocks in his garden? In any case, one of those boulder holding craters was only maybe ten feet past where she had left the bags. It was only sheer luck that had kept her belongings from being pancaked, and she was very much not willing to trust them to luck going forward.

"Okay Darcy," she said aloud, starting up a personal pep-talk as she grabbed the top loop handle, "You can do this.  Yeah, it's going to suck balls, but you don't have to enjoy it to get it done. It can't be any worse than writing three term papers in two days, or placing priceless scientific equipment while running for your life from creepy fartelves, right?"  She continued in that vein for a bit as she dragged the heavy bags across the courtyard, petering off a little past the halfway point to indulge in a bit of loud, extended whining.

Eventually though, she made it back to the inner door, pulling the bag in behind her.  She managed to drag it a couple feet down the hall before her legs decided that enough was enough and dropped her on her ass at the sight of more stairs ahead.  She considered trying to get back up to make her way back to her little nest from earlier but was kind of afraid she'd pass out on the steps and crack her head open or something, so she made do with pulling out a few of the more pillowy items from her pack and made herself as comfortable as she could before exhaustion rose to claim her once again.

***************

Waking up was painful.  Excruciatingly so, as an absolute bitch of a charlie horse dragged her kicking and (literally) screaming back to the world of the waking.  Several desperate minutes of rubbing and stretching later she had mostly worked the cramp out only to find that the one acute pain had masked a whole host of stiff and aching muscles.  Further stretching helped some, but the cacophony of cracking joints, up to and including her neck and spine, was honestly a bit worrisome.

"Fuck all. I really hope I can find an actual bed sometime soon," she muttered to herself as she got back up on her feet and swung her pack up over her shoulders yet again, tucking the blanket roll from the saddlebags under her arm this time. The idea of exploring further to try and actually find something more bedlike was tempting, but from what little she'd seen before, the inside of this castle-fort-thing was fucking immense and she was still so damn tired.  Provided that the floorplan was actually static, her little pillow pile was somewhere she knew she could find and it wasn't _that_ far away.  When she reached the t-intersection at the end of the hall, though, she noticed that something was... different.  

From the top of the left hand staircase, the one she hadn't been up yet, came a  faint greenish glow. It was only slightly brighter than the weird ambient light level that kept what should be pitch dark hallways perfectly visible.  She squinted at it for a moment, wondering if her tired eyes were playing tricks on her, until she noticed that the green was coming from these weird spiky glowy shapes on the walls that kind of looked a little like the runes used in Asgardian writing that Frigga had been showing her the basics of.  None of the shapes on the wall though, were at all recognizable as words and they were getting brighter as she watched. Without a word she hightailed it out of there, booking it back up the other staircase to her nest room as fast as the sudden rush of adrenaline would take her. She considered herself reasonably genre savvy and there was no way she was about to go and be _that girl_.  

By some small miracle she made it back to her little safe room with no further incidents and gratefully threw herself down onto her pillow pile in relief.  As the adrenaline faded though, the trickling sound of water coming from the other side of the room quickly became a very strong motivator for getting up and poking around long enough to try and find a convenient hole or a bucket or something before she ran out of clean pants.  she glanced again at the twin doors in the middle of the room, and decided that she could at least pull out the fancy Asgardian flashlight equivalent that she'd borrowed and take a quick look. As it turned out, she didn't need the flashlight after all, because this time when she pushed open the door the room on the other side was just as bright as the rest of the hallways and rooms she'd been in.  And while she knew she should have been suspicious of that, she was a little too busy thanking every deity she could think of (with a few notable exceptions) because she'd hit the jackpot. The individual fixtures and floor plan were not entirely familiar, but neither were they entirely foreign, and the room she'd just entered was unmistakably some kind of public restroom. At least something was going right.

Business done, she went straight back to her pillow pile, spending a little longer this time adjusting them for a more comfortable sleeping position. After several minutes of heated internal debate she also shucked her riding clothes in favor of something comfier. As she tucked the blanket around her legs and slid her glasses back into their case, she mentally crossed her fingers that she'd actually be able to sleep for more than a couple hours this time.  On a whim, Darcy pulled the Starkphone out from her pack. The clock was worthless of course, but there was a stopwatch/timer function that could be set to run in the background with minimal battery drain. She started the timer, set the phone aside, and buried herself in the pillows.

 

*****************************

Thankfully, the next time she woke up was much less unpleasant than the prior two instances.  Her muscles were still sore and a little bit stiff, but there were no cramps to deal with, her eyes didn't hurt and she actually felt rested.  She pulled the phone out to check the timer and sure enough, she'd slept over ten hours this time, leaving her feeling alert enough to get down to some extended exploration. As nice as her little nest room was, she still wanted to try and find an actual bed.  Somewhere to bathe or shower would be nice too. In short, a long term living space.

"Do you not know what proper sleeping quarters look like or is it your _habit_ to nest like vermin do?"

She shrieked, shooting up off the pillows with the blanket clutched to her chest.  The God of Chaos and Lies stood in the doorway leaning sideways into the frame, arms and ankles crossed.

"Holy fucking shit you creepy fucking dickhead, are you trying to give me a heart attack!?" Darcy was distantly aware that cursing out her new lifelong neighbor every time she saw him was probably not the best way to make her life any less miserable in the future, but adrenaline always seemed to turn her brain to mouth filter off entirely.  It would have been nice to be wearing more than an oversized t-shirt and yoga pants but at least her glasses were easy to grab.

With her glasses on she could see the disgust on his face when he spoke again.  "It seems your language is as deplorable as your sleeping habits.

"Oh, fuck off you sanctimonious blueberry dickwad.  It has been such a supremely shitty couple of days that I feel like I've earned the motherfucking right to fucking curse as fucking much as I fucking want, so shove it up your ass, right next to your fucking head."  And there went her mouth again, running off without any input from the rational part of her brain. But jeeze it was a lot harder to be terrified of him when she'd seen that expression on so many hipster douchebags and stuck-up trust fund snobs that she’d lost count. The lack of howling rage and murderous glares may have also been a factor, though a slightly less than murderous glare did make an appearance when she called him a blueberry dickwad. She braced herself for a further explosion, and was confused when all she got was an overly dramatic eye roll as he turned to walk off.

Her sigh of relief was cut short when he stopped and turned back only two steps out the door.

"Well? Are you going to come on your own or do I need to carry you?"

"Say _what_ now? Come _where_ ? And _why_?" Ugh. She hated that she wound up babbling so much around him. The look on his face made it plain that he thought she was a dumbass, and she'd really like to be able to make him shove it up his ass, because she knew damn well she was not.

He rolled his eyes again and huffed theatrically, "To the residential district, so that you can claim a proper bed. The Galduraðsmaðrhreif has hardly given me a moment's peace about it since last night, and likely won't until you are settled to it's satisfaction."

While the hint of resentment in his voice was both strange and worrisome, something else in his answer had snagged her attention. "The what? Gal-di-mah-what-the-what?"

"The Galduraðsmaðrhreif," he repeated, speaking more slowly this time and with an air of impatience as though she should obviously understand what he was talking about.

"I heard you the first time, bub, and it means exactly as much to me this time as it did last time - absolutely nothing."

This time his eye rolling was accompanied by a Long Suffering Sigh™ before he visibly and disconcertingly dropped into Lecture Mode to answer her, straightening his spine and tucking his hands into the small of his back.

"In a complex of this size, especially since it is underground, every inch of the walls would have been imbued with a panoply of enchantments to facilitate the necessities of  both everyday life, and long term upkeep and maintenance. In order to keep all of these enchantments working in concert and not interfering with each other, a single massive working would have tied them all together under a pseudo-consciousness tasked with management of the complex as a whole.  Such an entity is called a Galduraðsmaðrhreif, and is a fairly common working in estates and keeps of this size. Glaðsheimr, for instance has a Galduraðsmaðrhreif, as does the palace Nóatún in Vanaheim.” His posture eased slightly then, and he went from sounding like he was reading out of a textbook to a more speculative tone. "The Galduraðsmaðrhreif of those two royal estates have been in place for millennia, since Bor still sat upon the golden throne. If I'm not mistaken, this fortress was abandoned more than twice as long ago. The magic of its Galduraðsmaðrhreif is more ancient and complex than anything I've seen like it, to the point that it has more…personality than any other I've encountered. And now," he continued, voice going flat and irritated, "it seems to have decided that it wants to take care of the first residents it's had in gods only know how long. And since you ignored it's attempts to direct you to the residential district last night it has been pestering me to see that you get properly settled in. Therefore you will be installed in actual living quarters before this day is out, even if I have to carry you there myself."

"Shit, alright already, hold yer horses. Gimme five - no ten minutes to be human real quick and put some actual clothes on. I'll walk there on my own two feet, thanks." She still had so many questions but they could all wait until she was wearing something more than sleep shorts and an oversized tee.

He glared at her for a moment more, then turned away, snapping at her to 'make it quick'.

Darcy wasted no time in snatching up her stuff and fleeing to the bathroom to change.

Eight minutes later found her fully dressed and as ready as she'd ever be to follow Loki off to parts unknown. While there was a distinctly nonzero chance that this could turn out very very badly, she'd still much rather follow under her own power than be dragged around again or worse, tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. And… he was being a lot less awful this morning. She sure wouldn't go so far as to say he was being friendly or even at all pleasant, really he was still one hundred percent grade A asshole, but he had actually talked to her without any screaming or threats of violence. It was actually a bit disconcerting, but she wasn't ready to look that particular gift horse in the mouth just yet.

He was waiting for her at the door, marching off as soon as she reappeared after barely glancing back to make sure she was following. Darcy jogged up alongside him as he headed out into the hall and was annoyed when she very quickly realized she'd have to maintain a jog to keep up with his stupidly long-legged gait.

"Hey, look Loki, thanks and all for not carting me off in my sleep, but I'm not going to be able to keep up this pace for very long because I am short and my equally short legs are still sore as fuck from all the running and stairs and whatnot yesterday so it would probably be in both our interests if you could slow down just a little, oh towering one." He side-eyed her pretty hard at that, but grudgingly slowed to a pace she could more easily match.

He'd lead her almost back out into the big circular main hall before her curiosity got the best of her. "So this… Gal-di-whatsits-thingy.. I know you said it like eight times less than twenty minutes ago but damn that’s a mouthful, anyway, if I understood you right, it's something like a magical majordomo or castle steward right?"

Loki slowed a little more and peered at her out of the corner of his eye. "Galduraðsmaðrhreif. And…yes… that would be a reasonable approximation of the general purpose and function thereof."

"Cool." Darcy glued her mouth shut after that one word response because Loki was kind of looking at her like she crazy, like he seriously had any room to judge, but her brain had latched on to the idea, likely desperate for something harmless to distract from her current potentially terrifying situation. _Soooo it's like a magical J.A.R.V.I.S. Hmmmmm… what would be a good acronym? It's gotta be a good butler-y name… Alfred? Eh, I should probably try and stay gender-neutral. Pennyworth? Way too long. Jeeves? Maybe? No, no it needs to have an 'M' in there somewhere because Magic. James? That can be a last name. So it would be, what, Just A Magical…ly …Efficient… System? Just A Magical Efficiency System? It's not bad but I feel like I could do better._ This internal monologue continued as he lead her out into the main hall back towards the stairs down to the hallway that lead outside and then on past them. To be sure, she was mostly paying attention to where they were going at that point, counting the doorways on either side, because getting lost sounded absolutely awful, but she was still lowkey working out acronyms and thinking about both the content of Loki's little lecture mode moment and how very out of character it was in comparison with how he'd been yesterday, and even in comparison to what little she'd heard about him second hand. He was… confusing, to say the least.

After five left-hand doorways from the stairs she'd been using to get outside they took a left up another stairway that was wider even than the big hallway to her nest room. She must have some noise of complaint when they started up the steps, because he stopped and glared at her again. "What now?" he snapped.

"Sorry, It's nothing really," it was kind of annoying to be apologizing for something that was kind of his fault, but now that she was a little more awake she was kind of worried that she'd pushed her luck in bitching him out earlier and would rather get this over and done with before he blew up at her again. "I guess I'm just not really looking forward to having to drag the rest of my stuff up _another_ flight of stairs. I'm manage tho, so it's not really important."

The Prince of Douchbags merely rolled his eyes _again_ , and continued up the stairs.

The stairs ended at a t-intersection of hallways, passageways to the left and right curving back around the central ring, and one long hall stretching out across from the stairs up. Peering into the dimness ahead, Darcy could just make out another four way intersection and couldn't help but wonder just how immense this place was. Her glowering guide stalked off to the left, though, and she had to leave that thought where it lay just to keep up. Looking at the hallway they were in, she could see half a dozen doors in several different levels of ornateness, and several more odd patches on the walls that did not look like stone. The stone walls were carved in intricate patterns and scenic reliefs, far more detailed than the sparse ornamentation that had barely broken up the expanses of smooth stone in the rooms and passageways she'd already been in. He stopped only a short ways down the hall, though, at the first door to the left, easily the most elaborate door in sight, which swung open the moment he touched it.

"Here," he explained, his words clipped and emotionless. "These are the living quarters that the Galduraðsmaðrhreif wanted you in. It will see that you are provided with food and other necessities."

"Necessities, huh? Good to know. Oh!" Darcy could feel her face go goofy, but a lightbulb had just gone off and she was too pleased with herself to care. "J.A.M.I.S.O.N.! Just A Magically Intelligent System Of Necessitude!"

Loki was giving her that 'wtf, bitch?' look again, so she tried to explain a little better as she sidled through the open doorway.  "Look, eventually I will figure out how to pronounce the Galdi-whatsit word, but it might take me a bit, and it's kind of impersonal any way, so since it's kind of like a Magical A.I. version of J.A.R.V.I.S.,  I figured a similar acronym might make a good name."

The sceptical look didn't entirely go away, but Darcy could, and would, swear that she saw the corner of his lips twitch up toward something almost like a grin before he abruptly turned away and shouted down the empty hallway.  "There! She has a blasted bed now! So you can damned well leave me be!"

Darcy watched him storm away until he vanished behind a corner before closing her door and turning around to see what kind of place she'd just been installed.

"Holy Shit! This place is huge!"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm spending a lot of time describing the underground fortress/castle, but it has kind of turned into a major character in and of itself.  
> Let me know if y'all think I'm getting too bogged down by details?  
> By the way... Galduraðsmaðrhreif is not in any way a real word. Its a Mashup of three different words from at least two different Nordic languages. Please don't ask me how it's supposed to be pronounced.


	8. Track 8 - Be Our Guest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home suite home?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The theme of this chapter?  
>  _Life is so unnerving_  
>  _For a servant who's not serving_  
>  _They're not whole without a soul to wait upon_  
>  _Ah, those good old days when they were useful_  
>  _Suddenly those good old days are gone_  
>  _Ten (thousand) years they've been rusting_  
>  _Needing so much more than dusting_  
>  _Needing exercise, a chance to use their skill_
> 
> _It's been years since they had anybody here_  
>  _And they're obsessed!_  
>   
> 

The 'living quarters' that Loki had led her to were probably at least five times the size of any apartment she'd ever lived in before, and every inch of the place was fancy as fuck. Many of the stone dividing walls that separated the rooms in the common areas had been carved into intricate lacework filigree, others were made works of stunning relief, all carefully inlaid with exquisite metalwork and gems.  Despite the fact that the last people who lived here had noticeably taken most of their stuff (there were a number of blank spots on the walls and in the middle of rooms where there had probably been furniture, and she didn't see anything that looked at all personal), there was still a good bit of furniture and such, all velvets and silks and super plush and gorgeous. Plush rugs covered much of the polished marble floors, and rich draperies and tapestries hung from the less intricately carved walls. A grand staircase curved up around the room from the left of the entry to a balcony that circled above the main seating area. The corner that it curved away from had been fashioned into the likeness of an enormous tree with glowing spheres nestled in its branches. To the right was another, smaller seating area mostly enclosed by lacework stone walls, and then a hallway beyond even fancier walls. Past the sunken circular seating area in the middle of the main room, she could see the opening to a hallway behind solid walls hung with tapestries.  

As she would rather sleep on the floor than climb another set of stair right now, Darcy decided to pick back up with the right hand rule. Passing the small sitting room, she headed down the hallway to the right.  The first room to the right was a very large dining room, with a banquet table in the shape of a narrow 'U'. Beyond that was a smaller, more intimate dining set up, a smaller room with a table that would likely seat six at most, rather than the twenty plus that the other table would accommodate. On the opposite side of the hall was a room that she was ninety-nine point nine percent certain was the kitchen.  It was large and shiny, with long counters, extensive shelving and cabinets and three small waterfalls cascading from spouts in the walls into large basins. There were even still dishes on some of the shelves. A long, blackened depression down the middle of the room, though, was what really sealed the deal. There were racks set up over top of it and a huge stone structure arching over the middle, all the way up to the ceiling with multiple doors set at several different levels.  Learning how to use all of this was going to be... interesting. 

Leaving the kitchen behind, she stuck her nose through the doors on the right side of the hall heading back to the main room, revealing two half baths.  Which was kind of weird but okay. The rear wall of the main room curved from hallway to hallway with more impressive artistry in the form of both stonework and tapestry that complemented each other.  Turning into the hallway at the back of the room, she found that it went straight for somewhere between twelve feet and four meters  _ (See that Jane? I can mix measurement systems willy-nilly too!) _ before ending in a T-intersection with another hall.  Sticking her head out past the corners, she peered down it in either direction, noticing four relatively plain doors, relative being the operative word there, down the right hand part of the hall and two doors down the left, one pretty fancy, and one so absurdly fancy she could probably pay off her college loans  _ and  _ get a tidy condo in Manhattan.  She took a moment to weigh her options, whether to continue with her right hand rule or skip it and go straight for the bling. Reasoning that she was much less likely to get lost just within her suite, as big as it was, she turned down the left side of the hall to go check out what was behind the large, over the top door most of the way down on the right hand side.

Behind that fanciest of doors was the biggest bed she had ever seen, piled high with pillows, sitting in the middle of another fairly large room, the head of it nearer the door, up against another one of those carved-into-lacework-until-it-was-see-through walls. She thought it might even be bigger than her college dorm room (the bed, not the bedroom, the bedroom was bigger than her last apartment), and looked so incredibly plush and inviting that she was tempted to fling herself onto it like a three-year-old right then and there. The only thing that stopped her was how utterly grungy she felt, so she crossed her fingers and kept moving, passing what looked like two giant armoires to peer behind the heavy curtain on the other side of the room. The noise she made at seeing what was behind it was one part sob of relief, one part wild shriek of joy and pleasure, and one part squawk of perpetually-broke-millennial indignation. From a narrow horizontal opening along the top of the entire back wall poured a crystal clear cascade of water. At either end of the room it came down in a spray, kind of like one of those fancy rain shower heads, but in the middle it went from ceiling down to meet the water of pool below in a perfect unbroken arc. On the right side of the room the water showered down behind a short half wall onto a shallow basin that sloped to a drain in the right corner, under a bench seat on the right wall. Going left from there took you over a gentle rise to separate the water flow, down a stepped slope into an enormous pool on the left side of the room with ledges for seating along the walls and a part in the middle deep enough to swim in. Alcoves with curious glass bottles and jars dotted the walls above the waterline, visible even behind the waterfall, and as icing on the cake, Darcy could see steam rising gently off the water.

Without a second thought she headed straight towards the shower on the right, leaving a trail of discarded clothing in her wake.  As soon as the hot water hit her skin, she let out a moan of pleasure, relief sweeping over her with every droplet ‘til her knees threatened to drop her on her ass again.  She chose instead to take advantage of the bench seat, which was perfectly placed so that you could sit toward the front and still get soaked, which she did, leaning forward against the half wall with her head cushioned on her crossed arms, or to the back and be out of the spray.  She sat there, letting the water rinse away the dust and sweat and grime that she'd collected over the last, what, three days? With all the drama going down, she hadn't even remembered to bathe since the night before her and Jane's fateful horseback ride. When she could feel the muscles in her back start to unknot she shoved herself back upright, stretched a little and started actively washing up.  The beautiful little bottles and jars sitting in the alcoves caught her eye again.

"Hmmm... I wonder if any of these are like, body soap?" she mused aloud, poking carefully at the nearest one.  She nearly jumped out of her skin when, almost immediately, the wall under the alcove lit up with delicate, glowing green arrows pointing up at two of the bottles towards the left of the nearest shelf.  "Holy shitballs! Is... is that you doing that J.A.M.I.S.O.N.?" The glowing arrows pulsed slightly. "Dude." A thought occurred to her. "So that was you last night with the glowy green stuff on the stairs?"  More of the strange, spiky, rune-like shapes from the hallway appeared on a blank part of the wall. At least, she was pretty sure that's what they were - they were a lot smaller than the others. Darcy leaned forward and squinted hard at the wall, trying to get a better look at them.

"Okay, so that's neat, but for one, everything's kinda fuzzy without my glasses, and for two, if that's the same kind of writing you used on the wall last night, I still wouldn't be able to read it.  Somehow the translation spell I got isn't picking it up, so it's all Greek to me. That's why I ran off the other way, because I didn't know what was happening. So, can you do basic shapes like circles and squares and triangles and stuff? Or other colors?"   A blue circle appeared by her right hand, a red triangle popped up near her left hand and a yellow square showed up in between them. "Awesome. Okay, so I'd like to ask you some questions and I'll keep them to yes or no answers, so if you could use that same circle for yes and the triangle for no we might be able to actually communicate a little here. Is that okay with you?"  The three shapes faded out, and she worried for a minute that J.A.M.I.S.O.N. wasn't going to respond, but then the blue circle faded back in where the square had been, and Darcy whooped in delight. "Awesome! Okay, so I have all the questions, but for right now I'm going to stick to the matter at hand and figure out bath products. Are all these bottles and jars different kinds of soap and, like, lotion and other bath stuff?"  The circle flickered a moment before shifting into a yellow square. Darcy twitched.

"That is not one of the shapes we agreed on J.A.M.I.S.O.N.  Did you... did you not get anything I just said or... oh! Did I make the question too complicated to be yes or no?"  The blue circle popped back into place. Darcy was equal parts relieved and frustrated. "Okay. Right. So. What's a better way to phrase that.  Um.... Let's just go with this. Are the two bottles you pointed at with the arrows soap for washing my body?" The circle blinked at her. "Excellent.  Now, if there is soap that's meant for washing hair, would you please point at that?" Three more green arrows pointed at different bottles. "Perfect.  Hmmm... do you know what hair conditioner is? Stuff to make hair soft and manageable?" The arrows shifted to point at an assortment of bottles and jars. They continued in this vein until Darcy had a selection bathing products that covered all the basics and more specifics than she was sure she actually had energy to deal with that night.  There were even soft fluffy... things in a hidden cupboard that J.A.M.I.S.O.N. had indicated were for using to scrub down, kinda like a super poof loofah. She picked out the nicest smelling soaps, washed herself thoroughly then rinsed off and headed over to the pool part of the bath. While the thought of actually swimming around in the “bathtub” was amusing, it would have to wait until she was less exhausted to begin with. For now, she found herself a curvy part of the underwater ledge that she could lie back against and be almost entirely submerged.  

"Ah yeah," Darcy sighed contentedly to herself, "I could live here for the rest of my life. Right here. In this room."

************************

She stayed there soaking in the perfectly hot water for ages, and would have stayed longer but eventually her hands got so pruny she could barely feel them and she knew she was pushing her luck on possibly overheating.  When she had made her way back up the ramp and out of the shower area, one of the decorative panels slid back to reveal half a dozen fluffysoft robes in rich, dark colors. Though to be honest they were cut more like Hogwarts robes than her old terry bathrobe. The house slippers sitting underneath them, however, almost looked like they could have come from Bed, Bath & Beyond. She gratefully pulled one of the robes down and wrapped herself up, slid her feet into a pair of slippers, and headed back out to the bedroom.

Darcy was still physically exhausted enough that flopping down on the massive bed was a tempting idea, but she'd only been awake for a couple hours at this point and wasn't at all sleepy.  Also, her stomach was reminding her that half a protein bar did not a breakfast make. Especially when the three meals before that had also been portions of similar bars. So she bypassed the bed and headed back out toward the main room to see if she could figure out how to work one of the bigger field ration kits until she could figure out some better long term food solutions.  However, on the way to her backpack she found that someone had already started figuring it out for her. A large basket sat out on the table where there had been nothing before her bath. She could see what looked like fresh fruit and vegetables and maybe some cheese piled high inside. 

"J.A.M.I.S.O.N.? Did you put that there?"

She was reassured by the blink of a blue circle, and sat herself down to dig through her goodie basket.  There were a couple dozen pieces of fruit that she recognized from her time on Asgard a handful of other pieces that she didn't recognize, but assumed were also fruit, a bunch of root vegetables, two large wedges of cheese and a small stack of flatbreads.   _If circumstances were different I'd be really hesitant to eat any of this, because pomegranates and goblin fruit and all, but I'm already stuck here, so I might as well._ Darcy polished off half a dozen pieces of fruit, two flatbreads and nearly half of one of the cheese wedges.  She'd nibbled at a couple of the root vegetables to see what they were like, and decided that they would probably be better cooked. 

When she'd eaten her fill, she moved back to the main room and dragged her backpack over to one of the overstuffed chairs, and pulled out her phone.  Clean and warm and full, she settled into the plush chair and gave herself the rest of the day off to read and relax. She had plenty of time to worry about getting settled in and exploring later.  Like, the entire rest of her life. It could wait for her to finish the last few chapters of her book.

By the time the plucky heroine had finished saving the world, Darcy had eaten most of the fruit and finished the first wedge of cheese, and was ready to actually move again. Somewhat regretfully, she changed out of the Robe of Heavenly Fluff and into actual clothes.  She unpacked her backpack in the bedroom, folding her clothes into the bottom of the armoires and setting her electronics and other sundries out along a shelf near the bed. 

"Hey, Jamison? If I go wandering around can you make sure I can find my way back here?"  Upon seeing the circle of confirmation, Darcy psyched herself up, shoved her feet back in her boots and headed out the front door to retrieve her saddle bags.  Which she tripped over before taking two steps down the hall. Unlike when she'd tripped over them in the courtyard, Darcy did not manage to catch herself and landed hard on outstretched hands, then falling over to her right side with a thud, as her wrist gave out from under her.  

"Ow. Fuck.  Geeze, Jamison, you could have told me you brought my bags up,” Darcy groaned from her spot on the floor.  A quick wiggle of her affected moving parts indicated a scraped knee, and far more worrisome, a painful wrist injury.  She didn't think it was broken as she could still move her hand and all her fingers, but it hurt like a bitch to do so, and Darcy was really hoping it wasn't sprained.  "Shit. Well at least now I don't have to go anywhere." Pushing herself up with her uninjured hand was a chore, as was dragging the saddle bags in one handed, and her wrist throbbed unpleasantly the whole time.  Once she had the bags inside, she pulled a smaller side pouch that had already been packed when she found it. Aesir might heal absurdly quickly but they were all about the warrior lifestyle and even they were still generally better off when things like broken bones and major gashes were treated at least well enough to stabilize them.  As a result the Asgardian equivalent of a first aid kit had less in the way of bandaids and calamine and more in the way of splints and heavier wrap bandages and big patches that she was pretty sure were the magical equivalent of stitches. Darcy had considered switching the kit out for more foodstuffs, but had decided that there was a pretty good chance she'd need it.  And here she'd proven herself right not even two days gone. Wrapping her dominant wrist with the other hand was awkward, and she was grateful at least for how functionally similar the bandage was to a simple ACE wrap. She was delighted when she finished tying it off and it instantly started going cold and the pain in her wrist was drastically reduced. Way better than an ACE wrap.  Once she had that taken care of, Darcy stopped for a moment to consider her options. After careful consideration, she went and snagged her phone and made a beeline for the fantastic bed. 

It was a bit awkward, first getting out of the boots and clothes she'd just put on, and then trying to prop her injured wrist up and still manage to find a mostly comfortable reading position with the phone in her other hand, and she was starting to worry about the battery life, which was currently at sixty three percent, but she really couldn't think of anything else to do just now with her arm injured.  She'd just have to find a sunny place tomorrow where she could set up her solar charger and battery packs. In the meantime, she asked J.A.M.I.S.O.N. to turn down the lights and please make sure she was awake first thing in the morning, pulled up the next book in the series she'd been reading earlier and tried her best to relax. She was asleep before she finished the first chapter.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving Everybody! Yes, even my non-American readers, you may not celebrate it, but I am still so very thankful for you.  
> Bit of a filler chapter, but there's actually quite a bit of worldbuilding amidst all the indulgent prose, I promise. And despite appearances Loki does actually have a (tiny, unseen) active role in this chapter. Can you guess what it is?

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah. At the end of TDW, Odin catches Loki and loses his shit. Again. Finds a much farther off hole to toss him into.


End file.
